


Failure

by delphinus



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Damian is frustrated, Dick is tired, Gen, Hurt and comfort, Mentions of Death, Tim and Damian talk, even to Damian, mild angst?, sort of fluffy, tim is a good brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4203390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delphinus/pseuds/delphinus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When something goes wrong on a patrol, it leaves Damian upset and frustrated with himself. Tim decides to talk to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Failure

Tim frowned when he stepped into the Cave and saw Dick alone. "Where's Damian?"

Dick cracked a weak smile. "Careful, there. It almost sounds like you're starting to care about him." Then he sighed. "Dami's upstairs. It was a bad night."

Tim recognizes that look on his brother's face. "Someone died."

"Yeah. Dami isn't taking it very well. I should go talk to him, but I have work to do, and-"

"Get some sleep, Dick. I'll talk to him."

"Tim, are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Go to bed." Tim turned and headed back upstairs. He found Damian sitting on his bed, staring at a blank page in his sketchbook. "Hey. What happened tonight?"

Damian looked up and glared at him. "Hasn't Grayson already told you?"

Tim shrugged and sat down on the bed. "Yeah, but I figured I'd stand a better chance of getting the whole story from you. You being superior and all."

"We failed." When Damian finally spoke it was soft and filled with all of the emotion of a frustrated, hurting twelve-year-old. "There was a little girl counting on us and we failed her."

"And you think that if you'd gotten there sooner, or moved faster, or hit harder, you could have saved her."

Damian nodded.

"Stop. You can't think like that, or you'll drive yourself insane with guilt."

"But I failed! I have been trained from birth to be a living weapon, perfect in every way, and I could not save one little girl! She is dead right now because I could not stop a single manic with a gun."

Tim sighed. "I'm not going to tell you to stop blaming yourself. That would just be hypocritical. Truth is, we all blame ourselves at least a little for the ones we couldn't save. For the ones we weren't strong enough or fast enough or smart enough to save. Because we're human. We're not like Superman or Wonder Woman or even Aquaman. We're just normal humans who dress up in stupid costumes to run around the city at night. Even with all of our tools and our training, we can't save everyone every time. It just doesn't work that way."

"I know that," Damian insisted.

"But it's one thing to know it and another to have proof. Do you know who the first person I lost was? A twenty year old man. He told me his name was Robert. There was an armed robbery at the First National Bank, and both he and his girlfriend were being held at gunpoint. Nightwing was with the Titans and Batman was busy with Two Face across town. I was on my own and I could only save one of them. So I saved his girlfriend. He thanked me...right before he died in my arms. Then? She jumped off a bridge a week later. I was an absolute wreck for a month."

"How did you deal with it?"

"I didn't. I trained until I literally passed out from exhaustion, and then I'd only get a few hours worth of sleep because the nightmares were so bad. Every night in my sleep I saw both of them asking me how I could have failed them, and wasn't I supposed to be a hero? It got so bad that Alfred took to drugging my cocoa just to get me to rest. And then, after a month of being as hard on myself as I possibly could, I realized something. That there wasn't anything I could have done and by focusing on should-haves and could-haves I was doing more harm than good."

"Does it ever get easier?"

"No. You've just got to try to press on and save as many others as you can to make up for it."

"I do not want to go to sleep," Damian admitted. "Every time I close my eyes I see her face twisted up in fear and pain and-" He cut off, pained.

"The best way to deal with the nightmares is to sleep with someone," Tim advised. "I don't care if it's me or Dick or even Alfred. But you need someone. Even if they can't keep the nightmares away, they'll at least be able to wake you up." Tim started to get up, but Damian reached out and caught his wrist.

"Drake. Stay, please."

Tim sat back down and tugged Damian into his arms. When the boy didn't seriously struggle, he arranged them both on the bed so that he was kind of curled around his younger brother. "Go to sleep, Dami. It'll be alright."

Dick found them like that later, tangled together on top of the covers. He pulled the sheets up over them and quietly backed out of the room.


End file.
